The Letters of Horace Walpole, Earl of Orford — Volume 3 eBook

I was excessively amused on Tuesday night; there was
a play at Holland-house, acted by children; not all
children, for Lady Sarah Lenox(124) and Lady Susan
Strangways(125) played the women. It was Jane
Shore; Mr. Price, Lord Barrington’s nephew, was
Gloster, and acted better than three parts of the comedians.
Charles Fox, Hastings; a little Nichols, who spoke
well, Belmour; Lord Ofaly,,(126) Lord Ashbroke, and
other boys did the rest: but the two girls were
delightful, and acted with so much nature and simplicity,
that they appeared the very things they represented.
Lady Sarah was more beautiful than you can conceive,
and her very awkwardness gave an air of truth to the
shame of the part, and the antiquity of the time,
which was kept up by her dress, taken out of Montfaucon.
Lady Susan was dressed from Jane Seymour; and all
the parts were clothed in ancient habits, and with
the most minute propriety. I was infinitely
more struck with the last scene between the two women
than ever I was when I have seen it on the stage.
When Lady Sarah was in white, with her hair about
her ears, and on the ground, no Magdalen by Corregio
was half so lovely and expressive. You would
have been charmed too with seeing Mr. Fox’s
little boy of six years old, who is beautiful, and
acted the Bishop of Ely, dressed in lawn sleeves and
with a square cap; they had inserted two lines for
him, which he could hardly speak plainly. Francis
had given them a pretty prologue. Adieu!

(123) Basil Fielding, sixth Earl of Denbigh, and fifth
Earl of Desmond. He died in 1800.-E.

(124) daughter of the Duke of Richmond, afterwards
married to Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, Bart.-E.

(125) Daughter of Stephen Fox, first Earl of Ilchester;
married, in 1764, to William O’Brien, Esq.-E.

I have not written to you lately, expecting your arrival.
As you are not come yet, you need not come these
ten days if you please, for I go next week into Norfolk,
that my subjects of Lynn may at least once in their
lives see me. ’Tis a horrible thing to
dine with a mayor! I shall profane King John’s
cup, and taste nothing but water out of it, as if
it were St. John Baptist’s.

Prepare yourself for crowds, multitudes. In
this reign all the world lives in one room: the
capital is as vulgar as a country town in the season
of horse-races. There were no fewer than four
of these throngs on Tuesday last, at the Duke of Cumberland’s,
Princess Emily’s, the Opera, and Lady Northumberland’s;
for even operas, Tuesday’s operas, are crowded
now. There is nothing else new. Last week
there was a magnificent ball at Carleton-house:
the two royal Dukes and Princess Emily were there.
He of York danced; the other and his sister had each
their table at loo. I played at hers, and am